Workin' hard for the money.

These last two weeks at work have been extra busy for me. Well, not just for me, everyone at work seems to be swamped lately. What do businesses do in a down economy?...Advertise. So what exactly do I do at work? I'll list a few examples.

One of our biggest clients is the Eat With Us Group. They own the very popular chain of southern restaurants including Sweet Peppers Deli, Harvey's and the Grill. Every person at my work plays a part in this account. I mainly work with their online advertising and website. I am now officially certified with Google AdWords and have been using this for their online advertising. This task takes up a good chunk of my work time, especially this week when we launched about 30 new online ads.

I have also recently been given a new account where I am the one of the project managers which is exciting. It's a small cheesecake company that has been around for many years but has never actually had a professional marketing campaign. Everything has to be overhauled and redone. I am the one responsible for meeting and communicating with the client and working with our graphic designers on their new look. This afternoon I am actually going to their site to take production photos. I've never done anything like that before so I hope I do good!

Another big thing I do at work is manage the billing and payments of all our vendors. As a marketing firm, we are the "middle man" between the client who is advertising a product or service and the media (newspaper, radio, tv, you name it). Our vendors bill us, then we bill the client. The client pays us, then we pay the vendors. Somewhere in there our firm takes a cut of profit. I have slowly taken over handling these vendor/client payments and now it is completely my responsibility. Twice a month, I dedicate an entire work day to this and sometimes that's not even enough. I then work closely with our accountant to make sure everything is settled and accounted for.

There are numerous other things that I do at work but these are the things that have encompassed most of my time lately. I am so thankful to have a job out here in Mississippi and even more thankful to have one that most days I enjoy (not to mention that it is allowing us to quickly pay off those pesky student loans).

One last thing I'll share with you purely for your entertainment... A while ago, the creative director at Quest thought it would be fun to make everybody into a "superhero". Nothing has ever really been done with the heroes; it's more for our own enjoyment. When I came back to work in August as a permanent, salaried employee, they made me feel part of the team by giving me a superhero of my own! What do you think?